


“i’ll pick it up after work.”

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [61]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Marriage Proposal, Modern AU, proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22439494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: As Alexander cannot plan to save his life, he enlists the help of exasperated George Mukherjee and less than approving Daisy Wells as he works on the most perfect proposal he can think of.Modern AUWritten for the sixty-first prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady & George Mukherjee, Alexander Arcady/Hazel Wong
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [61]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	“i’ll pick it up after work.”

It’s my ten-year anniversary with Hazel and I want it to be the most romantic thing I can possibly curate. Not that I could pull off anything grand on my own. George, ever-eager to lend a hand during a lull in cases, has offered to help me with anything I need for the anniversary. Having known me since I was eleven, he knows that I plan to make it huge.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” I confess as I hop the railing of the wheelchair ramp leading down from the skatepark. George and I are on a case once again, investigating the disappearance of a wealthy man who lives nearby. We’ve been trekking down muddy paths, up steep hills, and through areas frequented by teenagers and the suspicious burnt and pine-like smell of weed, weaving through and ruling out all possible directions from where he was last seen.

I am quite convinced that the ground swallowed him up: this man is  _ impossible  _ to find. 

“You could take her out for dinner,” George offers, though the suggestion is hollow. He’s just said that to fill the silence while he considers something that actually has merit.

“Hmm, perhaps.”

We come to a divide in the path, one leading towards the coast and the other towards the local park.

Both of us know that the coast will be more interesting, steep concrete slopes for middle-aged men in the grips of psychosis to fall down, shallow waters for bodies to be thrown into, and sharp rocks for heads to be dashed against.

George takes his phone from his pocket and produces a coin from one of the slots to hold cards, and I groan. “Please, George. We all  _ know  _ that you cheat.”

“Please, Hastings, you know me better than that,” he replies with a rather dashing smile thrown my way. “It is simply Shiva’s way of apologising for how shoddy other areas of my life are: she has made me exceptionally excellent at actions of luck.”

“I’m calling heads for coast.”

“Tails for coast.”

He flips the coin and slaps his hand over it. When he moves his hand away, we both peer down.

It’s tails.

“Fuck.”

He laughs and slips the coin back into his phone case. “Unlucky, Hastings. Meet you back here in an hour?”

“Half an hour.”

“Forty-five minutes.”

“Deal.”

* * *

Fifty-eight minutes later and I am no closer to finding any trace of a well-dressed businessman or stumbling across any miraculous ideas for what I should do for our anniversary.

I’m picking my way through the foliage behind the park for the fifth time, halfway up a tree, when footsteps hammer down the path towards the park and deviate onto the grass. When I look over my shoulder, I see George running towards me in more distress than cases usually cause him. I scramble down from the tree and land on my feet just in time for George to slam into me, wrapping his arms around me.

“Answer your fucking phone, Hastings,” he mumbles against my shoulder, his hands knotted in the back of my shirt and a dampness soaking into my shoulder. “I thought you were dead.”

Astonished, I wrap my arms around his back and say, “No, George, I’m alright. It’s alright, you’re okay.”

He swears at me, words with no bite as he wipes at his eyes with his handkerchief. “Idiot.”

“Proudly.”

He leans back against the tree I was climbing and scowls. “Don’t do that. I don’t like thinking that you’re dead.”

“I don’t like thinking that you’re dead either,” I tell him, leaning against the tree beside him and wrapping a hand around his wrist. “Are you going to call Felix?”

With a nod, he reaches into the pocket of his greatcoat and takes out his phone, choosing the number of ‘M’ from his list of contacts.

I tune into his conversation near the end, hearing him say, “It’s ridiculous! It’s as if the man was snatched from… the…  _ sky _ .”

Both of our eyes follow the same path, across the treeline that we can out of and into the air.

“FUCK!” George yells, pocketing his phone and taking off like a shot across the grass.

I can ask for his assistance in a proposal later.

* * *

“Right,” George says, taking a wet wipe from the packet on M’s desk and wiping his hands clean of blood, “you have an idea?”

It feels innapropriate to talk about proposing to my girlfriend when my hands are covered in blood, I haven’t taken a shower since a heavy and bloated dead body crushed me when it fell from a tree, and there’s a ‘murder board’ on the wall in front of me, accompanied by pictures of John and Jane Does.

“Yeah,” I tell him, deciding that,  _ fuck it _ , our lives are weird to no end. If I decide to wait for ‘normal’ circumstances to come around, whether that be to inform George that I plan to propose or the proposal itself, I will be waiting for my entire life. “I’m going to propose.”

“Oh, wonderful!” he says, wiping some dried blood that is streaked up and down his arms. “That’s  _ really _ … well, that’s just fantastic! What do you need me to do?”

“Help me pick out a ring,” I tell him holding out my hand and waiting for him to give me a wet wipe.

With a huff, he says, “There, you lazy prick. Also, why me?”

“You have a good eye for jewels.”

Glancing down at my hands, George scowls and makes a noise in the back of his throat. Then he reaches over to take my hands in his, snatches the wet wipe from my hands, and starts wiping my hands and arms of the blood. “You’re bloody useless.”

I make a disapproving noise. “Oi! I’m perfectly alright at doing basic tasks!”

“Except being tough enough on scrubbing at your skin to get the blood off.” As he works at scratching off the dried blood (the fact that George has ‘mastered’ the art of getting blood off of my delicate skin is rather concerning), he says, “I may have a good eye for jewels but so should you. We’ve investigated enough jewellery robberies.”

“ _ Please _ .”

“Of course I’ll help you, you prick.”

I glance down at his hand, at the part of his ring finger that is less tanned than the rest of his hand. Nowadays, he wears his ring on a chain around his neck. He doesn’t like to get blood on it during investigations. This came after an expensive cleaning he had to pay for because blood made its way under the diamond.

_ “That’s what happens when you go fishing around in someone’s bloody, disembowelled insides for a bullet,” I remember telling him. _

_ “Oh, Hastings, my ring!” he whined, working it off his finger and mournfully holding it up in front of his face. “It’s covered in blood!” _

_ “You stuck your hand in someone’s guts, George! Of course it’s covered in blood!” _

“I might ask your husband for advice instead,” I tease, glancing at the chain that dips into the collar of his shirt. “Your ring is wonderful.”

“ _ Expensive _ ,” he corrects, though his smile is fond. “Anyway, of course I’ll give you a hand.”

  
“No.”

“Please, Daisy!”

There is a rasping sound that howls up into my headphones, which I know is Daisy putting the microphone between her lips and exhaling to irritate me. She  _ knows _ that I hate the sound that whines into my ears.

“Come  _ on _ , Daisy! Don’t you want to make sure that the proposal goes well! It is your  _ best friend _ being proposed to.” 

There’s a pause and she says, “Alright. What do you need me to do?”

“Just how romantic can you be?”

“I am  _ so _ glad that you asked.”

* * *

Two hours later, Daisy Wells appears on my doorstep. She’s dreadfully bored, as she won’t detect without Hazel, who is currently in Hong Kong. However, the most notable thing is that she shows up with a  _ notebook _ .

“What have I let myself in for?”

“Fuck you, Arcady.” She steps inside and sticks her middle finger up at me. “Right, let’s get planning.”

She sprawls herself out on the sofa while I relax in an armchair that is a little bent out of shape from both Hazel and I sitting in it together. “What ideas do you have, Daisy?”

“I’ve scored out some ideas but I’ll tell you them anyway. Hire a band and have them play her favourite song.”

“She will shoot me. I can’t do anything painfully public.”

“Exactly.”

“The next option is how George got proposed to so let’s  _ skip _ that.”

I snort. “You mean an incredibly public proposal after watching a West End show.”

She scores something out with her pencil and looks up at me, the wrinkle appearing at the top of her nose. “Why are you proposing to Hazel?”

“Because I love her.”

“A hundred people have loved her. I need a better reason than that, Arcady.”

I look into Daisy’s blue eyes, hard with the furious meaning of her words. “It is because I love her, Daisy. I love Hazel to pieces with everything I have. I want to keep her… not safe. I want to make sure that she has somewhere to return to after keeping  _ herself  _ save. Hazel can hold her own, you and I know that, but I want her to know that she doesn’t always have to. You do that, confirm that to her, with your promise rings. I want to promise that to her with a ring of my own.”

For a long moment, Daisy and I lock eyes.

“You have my blessing, Arcady.”

“I do?”

I fling myself at her as she does the same to me, and being wrapped in the arms of Daisy Wells is an odd experience. She is tall, taller than me, and whippet-thin, all pointed elbows and jutting hip bones.

“You should be saying ‘I do’ at the altar, Arcady,” she mutters into my hair in a voice that is almost poisonous.

“Shut up.”

“Your blessing means more to me than the blessing of her father.”

“It does?” Daisy pauses. “No, hold the fuck up. You got Vincent’s blessing?”

“Yes!” I reply with a grin on my face. “It was brilliant.”

“When?”

“Months ago. When I flew over with Hazel to meet her extended family, she went out with Rose to go and get their grandparents and I asked for the blessing of Vincent, her mother, Jie Jie, and May.”

She raises an impressed eyebrow. “You’re thorough, Arcady. Thank you.”

* * *

Together we work through ideas.

“Too public.”

“She’s too self-conscious”.

“Too public.”

“Too time-consuming.” Daisy raises an eyebrow. “For her, I mean”.

“Too public.”

“Too public.”

“Too public.”

“Too public.”

“Too public.”

“We aren’t a couple like…  _ that _ .”

“That makes me sound creepy.”

“She’d trip over a ribbon. Or I would.”

“I can’t fucking cook.”

“You  _ know  _ she hates puzzles.”

“I don’t think Vincent wants to be involved.”

“ _ Why? Who?  _ Oh, right the internet.”

“That one’s not bad. But Hazel deserves more than not bad.”

“Choose a favorite place that has personal significance to the two of you. Once you're there, ask someone nearby to take a picture of you together. Instead of posing, drop down on one knee,” Daisy reads aloud. The look on her face tells me that she knows it’s perfect.

“Daisy! It’s perfect!”

She lets out a most unladylike shriek and flings herself at me. “On one condition.”

“Which is?”

“I get to take the photo.”

“Deal. It can’t be with a shitty phone, though.” 

She laughs louder than I have ever heard. “A man after my own heart, Arcady. I’ve been meaning to order a new lens for my camera but I can’t afford it...”

Daisy took up photography when Hazel was in university. George, Hazel, and I were in Cambridge (I spent my time pushing George to ask out Rustam (his now-husband), while George spent his time learning to piano and planting his feet on the ground to make it especially hard for me to push him to ask our Rustam) so we didn’t  _ see  _ the height of her obsession, but according to Hazel, who visited, it was dreadful. 

“I have money,” I say, astonished that I’m offering. Really,  _ George  _ has money, a large sum that we were given by a rich family for solving a case. It’s in George’s bank account so I have to awkwardly ask him for money when I want to use it. Despite the annoyance of it, we find it hilarious. “I can buy you a lense. A small price to pay for some proposal photos.”

“I’ll pick it up after work.”

* * *

A week later, when Hazel is back, we all have takeout pizza at Daisy and Amina’s flat.

I say  _ all _ when really it’s  _ all  _ minus two: Amina and Rustam.  _ I  _ know that Rustam is out helping Amina shop for rings. Hazel helped her pick out the accompanying earrings when she arrived back in England earlier today. We told Daisy that she arrived back at four but she arrived back at one, giving them three hours to deliberate. 

I would make fun of them but… well, George and I spent  _ four  _ hours deliberating over the ring. 

Daisy and I are having the takeout/takeaway argument again, while Hazel orders it on her laptop and whines at us to shut up.

“Detectives,” Daisy says, cutting me off in the middle of a sentence. “I have a proposition.”

“We aren’t going to kill someone.”

“Shut up, Watson,” she says in good-natured tones. “No, just  _ look _ : I’ve got us train tickets.”

Hazel takes a sharp breath, staring at the tickets Daisy is flourishing in her hand, reaching forward delicate fingers to read the destination. “Oxford?” She whirls to me. “Love, did you know about this?”

I hold up my hands, the picture of innocence. “I did not!”

“I did,” George drawls. “Thought it would be nice.”

“Oxford,” Hazel sighs, leaning against my side and tucking her knees against my thigh. “How wonderful.”

I set my hand on her knee. “Wonderful indeed.”

* * *

Our anniversary is technically in the middle of September, as that’s when I asked her out officially. So that’s what leads us to parading through the city George, Rustam, Hazel, and I studied in during the height of start-of-year panic. Amina and Daisy walk along hand-in-hand, Daisy pointing out areas of experience while Hazel is beside them, adding in her own stories from her climbing days. 

“Oh, Fitzbillies,” Rustam says nonchalantly, and I start in a violent way. George merely raises an eyebrow.

We had planned to have Daisy start taking photos now, to make the random photo of Hazel and I less odd.

Luckily, Daisy is a step ahead of us, camera out and snapping photos of the shop front, of cycling students, of Amina and Hazel, of George and Rustam, and myself walking in front.

When we reach Mauldin College — Daisy is taking a photo of a plimsoll someone has idiotically dropped on top of a wall — Amina says, “Daisy! How about some photos here?”

Utterly unprompted. That girl has a sixth sense.

We rotate the pairs, George and I, Daisy and George, Daisy and Hazel… Hazel and I.

Daisy snaps one photo of us, another as I step away, and a third as I drop down on one knee. 

I don’t recall what I said.

I called her beautiful.

Wonderful.

Astonishing.

“The only thing I remember about the proposal,” I say, glancing about as I recall the vows I wrote, catching a glimpse of Daisy in her suit beside Hazel, “is the beautiful look in her eyes as she said yes.”


End file.
